


Whole, but Not Entire

by JackedofSpades



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Angst, Happy Ending, Suicide mention, anaander mention lol, basically just bad thoughts and dealing with them, but - Freeform, death mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-10 19:11:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11132961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackedofSpades/pseuds/JackedofSpades
Summary: The Tisarwat fic that needed to be written. Immediately post implant removal.





	Whole, but Not Entire

                I wake to the sound of phantom voices. Mine. Hers. _Hers_. All of them immaterial and teasing, pulling at the threads of memories in my mind. Pulling the neurons apart in my brain by hand. Ripping. Tearing. My head feels split open and when I open my eyes, a migraine greets me along with Bo Three. She hands me a shirt.

                "Lieutenant, did you manage to sleep last night?"

                I remember I'm on a military ship. I remember hundreds of them, maybe even thousands. I _don't_ remember, but there they are in my head. The inside of every ship I'd ever ordered built. No. Not me. But it was me.

                "A little."

                I remember dying. I remember it in my dreams. Then I remember dying over and over and over. But worse still than all of _her_ deaths, I remember being born.

                "Medic will be pleased, then.”

                I dress with the help of Bo Three but I am not sure who is making the effort today. I feel better. I feel worse. I feel, which is a change. I shuffle onward at the ship's direction. I should have memorized the way to the decade room by now, but I haven't.

                "Good morning Lieutenant Tisarwat."

                She shouldn't be here, in the Bo Decade room. It’s too bright in here, and it hurts my eyes. It shoudn’t be. Nothing is right. Bo. Darkness. Like my memories of before. Like the ones she ripped out of me. Inconvenient and distracting, stray hems that scratched against _her_ mind while she thought with my brain. I feel her like residue, filmy and cloying like day-old skel. _She_ hasn’t even eaten it before.

                But why is the ancillary here?

                "I wanted to see how you were feeling. Medic said you would be experiencing some dissonance while you adjust.”

                She's sitting before me with a cup of tea I know she won't drink from. For show. It's always a show. I must keep myself presentable. I cannot be vulnerable, and they must never know that I am a person. I am an idea. I am a child who just wants to go home.

                "I want to die."

                Kalr Five sees me to a chair across from the ancillary, her face a mask of perfect calm. She pours me tea that I appreciate because now I can look at it instead of her. But then I see my reflection on the surface of the liquid and vomit. The two of them say nothing as a Bo appears to clean up the mess. I’ve upset the ancillary.

                "You should be back in bed. I'll have Medic come to you, to check in."

                "No."

                I roll the after-taste of vomit  against my teeth and remember being sick on a shuttle as a child. My first trip in vacuum. I was stubborn, and faked swallowing the anti-vertigo pill my mother had given me. I thought I was dying.

                "It'll be worse, if you fight it."

                "Ironic, coming from you, _Justice of Toren_ ,” I hear myself say.

                I don't know _Justice of Toren_ , but _she_ does. I can smell death in my memories. Thick pools of blood so deep you could swim in them. Blood so dark it almost looks purple. I see it, though perhaps it would look different through _her_ eyes.

                "All the more reason you should trust me when I say you need rest."

                I stand suddenly. I want to strangle her. Want to rip out her ancillary implants slowly like petals off a flower. My aunt bought me a flower once. A small potted orchid. It was a gift for earning my assignment. A sweet, slender little orchid. Delicate and sensitive to the cold of a station. I would keep it on my desk, when I reached Administration. Of course, I never did. Instead I became the Lord of the Radch.

                "You're going to regret this. You're going to die, along with everyone on this ship. Along with this ship. Along with me.” Me again, speaking, I think.

                Kalr Five and the Bo exit the room. The ancillary takes a sip of her tea. Stands. Does not approach me.

                "You're welcome to try and kill me, if you want her to win."

                I can’t control my face. Muscles pull in childlike horror though I barely feel the connection take. But I know what she was getting at. It is the reason I haven’t already bitten my tongue and choked on it. The reason I haven’t tripped the access to _Mercy of Kalr_ she doesn’t know I have. The reason I haven’t contacted _her_.

                "I want _her_ dead."

                The ancillary calm of her face brakes for just a moment. Not a smile, but not not a smile.

                "So do I."

                It is the one thing all three of us want, the only thing I know with absolute certainty. In my moment of clarity I begin to think, to formulate the plan I will need to achieve it. To have Anaander's head. To get mine back.

                Fat tears begin to burn my cheeks, rolling down my face as I curl in on myself. I claw at my hair, my face; my gloves prevent any real damage before I am whisked away by more hands.  Bo Three guides me by the shoulders back to my void-dark bedroom. I sleep. I do not sleep. I sleep some more.

 

* * *

 

 

                When I wake again I know how I am going to do it. I am going to blackout _Mercy of Kalr_ 's cameras from the console in my room on the Kalr, Amaat, and Etrepa decks and then take the central access shaft to the shuttles before--

                "Brought you something good to eat. Some rice, and even a little bit of meat."

                Light floods the black of my narrow bedroom, illuminating the form of this ship’s Etrepa Lieutenant. I have not spoken to her directly. I do not even know her name. I take the bowl from her because I do not know what else to do.

                "I thought you could use a new face." She says no more after this, which is puzzling. It is a relief, to be perplexed by something so simple. It gives my mind a break.

                "Thank you."

                I had a sister once. She was a little older than me. We looked nothing alike, but we shared a mother. She was kind, and would sneak me food from time to time, when we were children. Sweet fruits and strips of meat. We would laugh when mother would try to berate us for our misbehavior.

                I remember killing them both.

                "You know, when I'm feeling unwell, a good long bath always helps clear my head."

                Even if I could bathe for thirty one centuries, it would not be enough to wash away the blood on my hands. Still, it was the first suggestion offered to me that actually sounded pleasant.

                "Thank you, lieutenant. I will try that."

 

* * *

 

 

                Somehow I'm in the Ship's gym. I have very little recollection of how I got here. I pull on memories and find pockets of pain and discomfort. I open my eyes and for once, prefer the present moment.

                "--dunno how the fuck you passed basic training. You're barely fit to lift a flask."

                Seivarden Vendaai. I know her because _she_ knows her. I can, if I concentrate very hard, see the thin threads between us in my mind. I can untangle the fact that Anaander Mianaai knew who Seivarden was, and that I do not. And even though I know this to be fact, I should not know her name. I am some third thing, who both does and does not know about Seivarden Vendaai. I am, in my present sta-

                "Hey, hey, cut that shit out. Nothing good comes from thinking about it. You have to keep moving. The second you stop you're fucked.”

                What Seivarden Vendaai says... makes sense. Clearly she's experienced some trauma. She's thin and a bit haggard, but has the look of someone who should never have known neglect. What _she_ knew about her tries to flood me again, but for the first time, I try to push the memories away.

                "It's impossible to control it, though."

                She puts down the weights she's holding, nods her head as if she understands. She couldn't possibly, but somehow it helps.

                "Don't try to control it, just try to live with it."

                She turns her back to hide her hands as she pulls off her gloves and puts on another, thinner pair that she begins to wrap with some fabric. She turns to a padded bag and begins to punch it.

                “You should have a go too. You’ll feel better.”

                I doubt that, but I take a turn when she is done and I don’t feel worse.

 

* * *

 

              

 

                I remember having a choice. One that would determine the fate of the universe. I could continue living a lie, continue being at war with myself. Continue fighting it. Or I could split. I could leave _her_ and try to fix those mistakes. I could try to live again.

 _No_.

                I can sort it now. That was _her_ arrogance. The Radch is not the Universe, whole and entire. I am not. _She_ is not. Nor Captain, either. All of us are fragments. But fragments can still do great things. Fragments are not always broken. Sometimes whole pieces break free.

                “You seem better today.” My Captain, Breq Mianaai speaks to me and I can almost filter the past out of the present. I can almost look to the future.

                “Yes. I think I am,” I reply as I take the bowl of tea from my Captain directly. I am standing in her quarters, my attention split between the riot of data streaming behind her on the monitors and the little chip in the bowl she has given me.

                “I’m glad to hear it. Sincerely.”

                “I believe you.”

                And I do.

                I shuffle forward, still sluggish from the drugs and from my own self-loathing, but I have ideas, and I want her to hear them. I want to help her shoot the Tyrant, as she calls her. I like that. I feel that.

                “Glad to have you aboard finally, Lieutenant Tisarwat.”

                “Glad to be here, Sir.”

**Author's Note:**

> Basically all the memories she was recalling were all Anaander's, if that wasn't clear.


End file.
